


New York State Wizarding School

by MissIzzy



Series: Hannah [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2008-09-01
Updated: 2013-04-06
Packaged: 2017-12-21 03:03:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/895028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissIzzy/pseuds/MissIzzy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the death of her mother, Hannah transfers to a school closer to home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Transfer Student

**Somewhere in western New York State, September 8, 1996**

Never in her life had Hannah Abbott been so grateful that American schools often didn’t start until after Labor Day. Her entrance into the secluded Appalachian valley had been observed by every member of the staff and faculty of New York State Wizarding School; if the students had been there too to gape at her, she didn’t think she could have stood it. The last thing she wanted at that moment was people looking at her. They’d been looking at her from the moment the British Ministry employee had entered the Hogwarts greenhouse, called out her name, and asked her if she would come outside with him.

But there was noone staring at her now, because there was noone in the room except her. She was in the main section of the principal’s office. There was an inner office beyond in which the principal, Mr. Bobwhite, was talking with her father. There was something about a principal’s office (and a Headmaster’s office too, she supposed, though she’d never been in the Hogwarts’ Headmaster’s office) that made a student feel like a little kid, even a 16-year-old student like Hannah, but more unusually, it made her feel safe rather than scared, even after the door opened and Mr. Bobwhite and her father came back in.

Mr. Bobwhite wasn’t the kind of man who could intimidate people anyway. He had grey hair, but he didn’t look to Hannah to really be very old, and his face was surprisingly soft, though more nervous. If he had been Professor Dumbledore, who was in charge of Hogwarts, or his deputy Professor McGonagall, Hannah knew he would have given her a piercing stare, which would cut straight through her face like a Legilimens, but Mr. Bobwhite didn’t seem to look at her face as much as he looked at her hair, or higher. “So...Miss Abbott?” He asked.

“That’s her,” Hannah’s father answered for her.

“Yes. Well...you know new students are supposed to have registered much earlier than the day before Labor Day.”

“We talked this over, and you agreed to let her in despite that. You've seen the record of our legal residence, and I can produce extra Muggle-based records if you want: northwest corner of New York City, within the overlap zone, so she is eligible for enrollment here.”

“I did agree...welcome to New York State, Miss Abbott. If you’ll just sit right there, I’ll send in Mrs. Hesselwin.”

Hannah tried to remember who Mrs. Hesselwin was, but she hadn’t really been paying attention when her name had come up. Really, she hadn’t been paying attention at all.

Mrs. Hesselwin was a witch who was younger than Mr. Bobwhite, but much taller. Hannah wondered what they looked like standing next to each other. Funny, probably.

She tapped Mr. Bobwhite’s chair before sitting down in it, and Hannah saw it change size for her. Then she put in front of her a partly unrolled bundle of parchment. Hannah recognized the broken Hogwarts seal on the top edge. “We have received your transcript from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. You’ll be pleased to hear you passed all subjects at the O.W.L. level necessary to more or less qualify for sixth year here at New York State, though those which you failed we will need to assess your skill at, at least in Transfigurations and Potions. However, I don’t see much trouble.”

She was trying, Hannah supposed, not to think about the fact that this meant New York State had lower standards than Hogwarts. Which was the biggest reason she was here, and she’d admit that freely to herself. The murder of her mother had sparked the transfer of schools, but Hannah thought that a month, two at most, and she might have changed schools anyway.

“Since you enrolled so late, it has fallen to me to see to your schedule.” For a moment the word “schedule” jarred Hannah; she had a strange feeling of being back in Muggle elementary school. At Hogwarts they’d always called it a “timetable.” “Our five requirements for juniors at New York State are the same as the requirements for the first five years at Hogwarts, except we don’t require the History portion: Transfigurations, Charms, Potions, Herbology, and Defense Against the Dark Arts.” Actually, Hogwarts required Astronomy too, but Hannah didn’t point that out. “We teach Charms, Herbology, and Defense Against the Dark Arts at about the same pace as Hogwarts, and as you passed the O.W.L.s for all three, we can put all three onto your schedule easily. I will more tentatively put you down for Transfigurations and Potions 6. As I said, I think you’ll test in without too much trouble.” Her eyes fell back on the transcript, and Hannah had the feeling they were on the T she’d gotten for Transfiguration. “I’m afraid there’s little use with you continuing your study of Ancient Runes here; a passing mark on the O.W.L. leaves it likely you’ve already learned all we could teach you. However, you may continue on with Muggle Studies and Divination, which would fill up your day schedule. Though as you failed the Astronomy O.W.L., I’m afraid you’ll probably have to take that class with the lower years-again we’ll need an assessment test.”

But then, Hannah thought it wasn’t impossible she might have passed that O.W.L., if everyone hadn’t been distracted during the testing session. But she still remained silent, as Mrs. Hesselwin rambled on, “You’ll have to drop Herbology for a history course next year; I’ll have to consult someone on that. Ah, Mr. Bobwhite.”

Mr. Bobwhite had returned, and he looked upset. “Mr. Abbott, Miss Abbott,” he said, “if you could wait outside for a moment. Mrs. Hesselwin and I must talk in private.”

Very alarmed, Hannah headed outside into the corridor, her father following. “Do you think they’ll turn around and refuse us?” she asked him.

“I don’t know, Hannah. I hope not.”

For ten long minutes, the two of them stood outside, Hannah staring at the decor. While Hogwarts had been made of grey stone, New York State was made almost entirely of red bricks, but even so, they didn’t seem much like the other bricks she had seen in her life. Other bricks lacked the magical charge that seeped into the walls here. The same thing had happened at Hogwarts, and maybe happened at all magic schools.

Finally the door opened, and Mrs. Hesselwin emerged, looking a bit shaken. “Miss Abbott, if you will follow me?”

Without waiting for an answer, she took Hannah’s hand and began leading her down the corridor towards the staircase. Hannah waved goodbye to her father, who waved back.

It was when they reached the stairs that Hannah first felt the sense of foreignness creep in. They were made of red brick, like the walls, and felt solid beneath her feet in a way the Hogwarts stairs never entirely had, not to mention wedged between the walls. These stairs, she thought, would go the same place no matter what day of the week it was. She felt almost relieved when Mrs. Hesselwin said to her, “Jump the next-to-last step; that’s a trick step.”

She led Hannah into the first classroom, which Hannah thought looked cheerier than most of the Hogwarts classrooms. The walls were lined with a soft tan stone, which was kept in better condition than Hogwarts’ craggy stone walls, with a strip of rock that went around the room just under the ceiling, and generated enough light to bathe the room in a soft glow. The desks were much like those at Hogwarts, except at a glance, at least, the legs didn’t look at all rickety.

“Sit down. I’ll be back in a moment.” Hannah took a seat near the door and stared at the blackboard. She couldn’t recall ever seeing a blackboard so clean, either at Hogwarts or at her Muggle elementary school. It gave her the creeps again.

Mrs. Hesselwin returned with a large crate, out of which she first took a pair of clay figurines. Hannah recognized them as the figures of the human and the house-elf typically used for a first attempt at Switching Spells. This, she was convinced, everyone at Hogwarts had mastered by the time they took their O.W.L.s, including her. Mrs. Hesselwin had barely finished saying, “Perform a Switch for me,” when the two heads were settled neatly on the opposite figurines. Well, not quite; the house-elf was just a touch too much to the right, but it was still pretty good.

Without comment Mrs. Hesselwin examined the figurines, then said, “Switch them back.” Switching back was easier to do; this time Hannah’s performance was flawless.

The next item surprised Hannah. It was a Muggle radio, though it had no electric cord, and she thought was rigged to work on magic. Ignoring her open confusion, Mrs. Hesselwin placed it in front of her and said, “Change it.”

“Into what?” Hannah asked.

“Into a book! What else?” Mrs. Hesselwin snapped, and Hannah grew angry. How in the world was she supposed to know what Mrs. Hesselwin wanted her to do?

She forced herself to calm down, then gave it her best go. What she ended up making was in fact a book, though the pages were a little thick, and the cover was even thicker, and the whole thing still had a metallic sheen.

Mrs. Hesselwin clucked with disapproval even before she picked up the book for closer examination. Hannah openly flinched when the pages  _clanged_  against each other. It only got worse as she flipped through them, creating a symphony of  _clings_  and  _clangs_  all of which slapped hard against Hannah’s ears. Their echoes remained in the air even after Mrs. Hesselwin put the book back down and tapped it once with her wand, turning it back into a radio.

Hannah felt better when the radio was replaced by an empty potion bottle. She was surprised when instead of the normal hawk, Mrs. Hesselwin ordered her to change it into a gila monster. Even so, her gila monster looked like it had everything in place. After her examination of it, Mrs. Hesselwin appeared to agree.

“Change it back.” That was harder for Hannah. She always hated doing this to animals, because she was really killing them. Even if they’d only just come into existence she hated it. On the first wave of her wand nothing happened. On the second the monster exploded. Though at least as the bits of it clattered on the desk, they did so as bits of green-coloured stone instead of as animal guts.

“Hmmmm,” Mrs. Hesselwin considered. “Stay there.” She took out her own wand and waved them over the shattered gila monster-stone, cause them to come back together in the form of the potion bottle.

“I think that should be sufficient for Transfigurations testing. I’ll need some time to prepare a Potions assessment, and of course the Astronomy assessment will need to be done late tonight. I’ll take you back to the principal’s office so we can see about setting you up in a dorm room.”

####  **Later that Afternoon**

The dormitories at New York State were set up to house two people per room, and there had been a spot newly made available in one room. Neither Mr. Bobwhite nor Mrs. Hesselwin told Hannah how the room had become half-vacant, but Hannah had a terrible suspicion that some young witch had just been found dead.

As Mrs. Hesselwin led her and her father into a clean, bright room with white walls and white bedsheets, she said, “Your roommate hasn’t arrived yet, I see. She should be here within a few hours at the most. Claim whichever side you like.”

They threw the suitcases onto the bed while Hannah found herself looking under the bed to see if they would fit there. She thought two of them might, but not three. The third would have to go into the closet. Her closet. There were two of them; both tiny, but still. It would be such a relief after the impossibly stuffed collective closet of the Hufflepuff dorm.

The bed itself was much smaller than her bed at Hogwarts had been, though, and much less pretty. No curtains, nothing of that sort. There wasn’t any wood in it either-all metal and wire. When she sat on it, Hannah could feel it sag. Then her father sat down on the bed too, and raised his eyebrows at how far his body sank.

“Do you replace the mattresses that often?” he asked, turning around, but Mrs. Hesselwin had left them to unpack without so much as a goodbye. “Be sure to ask someone that, Hannah.”

“I’ll ask my roommate when she arrives.” Hannah was already opening up her suitcases while looking at the dresser. Pale wood, again much less pretty than her dresser at Hogwarts, but about the same size, which was a little small for a year’s worth of clothes. There was a uniform here at New York State, but it typically wasn’t required for the first week or so, which was a good thing, because Hannah wouldn’t have it until then. She would be wearing her Hogwarts robes in the meantime.

She was long used to getting her clothes away by herself, so her father stood by the window and stared out of it as she worked. “Your mother was right,” he commented absently. “The valley really is very beautiful. More so than the Hogwarts grounds.”

She joined him there when her things were put away. She was stunned to discover he was right; the view was breathtaking. She hadn’t realized how high up they were; the ground fell far, far below them, visible only as a deep green image beneath the translucent mist that clung continually to the back of the valley. Above it rose the mountains, also green at this time of year, looming far over their window. If Hannah craned her neck, she could just see the peaks. They were a kind of odd fuzzy grey but they looked like they were touching the top of the sky. And this was just the back of the valley; Hannah hadn’t looked very closely at the rest of it but she now thought that might be even more beautiful.

There was a knock at the door. “I’ll get it,” said Hannah’s father. Hannah stayed at the window, not looking behind her, not wanting to stop looking yet.

Until she heard a familiar voice say, “Mr. Abbott? I’m here to see Hannah.”

She whirled around with a cry of “Alfred!” and ran across the room. Alfred Fadton scooped her up as they hugged; when they’d met in fifth grade they’d been the same height but since then he’d grown much taller than her. “How’d you know I was here?”

“There was an article in the paper about your mother which said you were planning to transfer here. It was a shock to hear about her, I never imagined...I’m so sorry.”

“I never really thought it could happen either,” said Hannah. “I think he went after her because I went to Hogwarts, of course, but still...we all have to be more on our guard now.”

“Why don’t you come in and sit down for a moment?” Hannah’s father suggested. “I’m sure you have a lot to do with unpacking, but surely you can take five minutes.”

“I can take a little time,” said Alfred, and they went back into the room. The two of them sat down on the bed, which sagged again, but Alfred took no notice. “I just got here. I found your room by that old tracking spell.”

“What old tracking spell?” asked Hannah’s father.

“Didn’t mother tell you?” asked Hannah, confused. “When I went with Ernie and Justin to see the Quidditch Cup, Ernie’s brother David put a spell on all our wands so when we said each other’s names our wands would point to each other, in case any of us got lost.” They’d come in handy, too, after the camp had been attacked by Death Eaters and she’d been separated from the others fleeing into the woods. “After I told Alfred about it, he suggested we have out wands similarly enchanted, so mother put a spell on them.”

“No, she never told me. Strange. But how did that article get into the paper? I didn’t talk to anyone about it? Did you, Hannah?”

“No.”

Alfred shrugged. “I can get the paper if you want.”

“No,” said her father. “In fact, throw it out. Such shamelessness should not be kept.”

“I wouldn’t call it shameless,” said Alfred. “They didn’t get all melodramatic or sob-storyish or anything like that. They really just stated that facts.”

“How’d they know Hannah was going to be here? How’d they even know she was at Hogwarts in the first place? They must have done some snooping around for that.”

That had to be true, Hannah thought. She decided to change the subject. “Let me show you the view from the window.” She took him to the other side of the room, her father following a little behind them.

Alfred took in a the view a little placidly. “Did I ever tell you after the view I had my first year here? First-years are kept near the ground, but I was lucky enough to have a room by the window. For most of the day you couldn’t see anything remarkable, just a lot of grass, but very early in the morning, the mist gets so thick it starts playing around, like it has a mind of its own-I think it might, around here. One of my roommates who was an early riser used to wake us up early when he thought it looked more incredible than usual, and I’m afraid we were usually mad at him at the time...” He laughed. “But I’m glad he did it now. One morning you try going downstairs early. You won’t get that kind of view from up here.”

“I think you did mention something about it? You kept going on about the ‘beautiful mist.’ It was that which drove it home to you that you weren’t in the Muggle world anymore, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” said Alfred softly, “it was.” There was silence then, and he was lost in the memories, she supposed, of when he had first learned he was a wizard and been immersed in their world for the first time.

“We should meet for dinner,” he said after a pause. “Do you know where the dining hall is?”

“Ummm,” Hannah wracked her brain, then shook her head.

“Okay,” Alfred took out his wand and drew a gold dot in the air. “So right now we’re here, up in the junior girls’ dorm. Did you come up using the stairs here?” He outlined them with his wand. When Hannah nodded, he continued to draw a line out. “A little past those stairs and you turn right, here, down this hallway, then the dining hall’s the third door to your left.”

“I see. So we’ll meet you there at...six o’clock?”

“Sounds good.” They went back to the door, and hugged quickly before he headed down the corridor. They waved just before he reached the stairs.

####  **About an hour later**

Hannah and her father were seated on her bed talking when they were suddenly startled by the door springing open and a Hispanic witch stepping in. Her eyes flew wide. “Oh! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you; I didn’t think they’d assign me a new roommate so quickly.” There was a trunk behind her, and Hannah could also see her parents.

“It’s okay. Do you want help with your trunk?”

“No, my dad’s got it, thank you.” She walked in with her parents following, her father floating the trunk behind her.

Hannah stood up and offered her hand. “Hannah Abbott. This is my father.”

Her new roommate shook it. “Francesca Martinez. These are my parents.” They were a tall family; Francesca was almost a head taller than Hannah, and her father was much taller. They were all clothed in wizard’s clothes, but around Francesca’s neck Hannah noticed a Muggle religious cross.

“So who were you roomed with before?” Hannah asked her.

She saw the sadness in her new roommate’s face, and knew she had been right when she’d guessed about what had happened to the poor girl.

“Her name was Adeline Mayfair. She was like me, a Christian, though she was Muggle-born. She...” She shook her head and started to cry.

“It’s okay,” Hannah whispered softly, placing her hands on Francesca’s shoulders.

Francesca breathed in, then said, voice thick with grief, “Mrs. Hesselwin told me when I came in here that she’d been found murdered up by Lake Erie, along with her entire family. And you know what was found above them?"

"The Dark Mark," said Hannah.

Francesca looked shocked she'd guessed. "Yes, exactly that! And noone knows why, why they’d come all the way over here just to kill them, or if they did anything else here-”

“Wait a minute,” said Hannah’s father. “When did this happen?”

“Oh...” Francesca shook her head. “I don’t know. Yesterday or the day before, I think.”

“Do you think they were the same Death Eaters who murdered mother?” Hannah asked him.

“What?” Francesca looked stunned. “Your mother was killed by Death Eaters?”

“Yes, a little less than a week ago. Though I’ve been attending school in Britain these last five years, so that might have been why they went after her.”

“You’ve been in Britain?” Mrs. Martinez interrupted. “How is it over there? Is it as bad as they say?”

“I,” Hannah hesitated. “I haven’t been there this summer, and while I was just there now it was only for a week. Then I heard my mother had been found dead and came back here. My friends there have been writing to me though. They talk about people disappearing every day, people being found dead...”

“God have mercy on them all,” said Mrs. Martinez softly.

“God?” scoffed Hannah’s father. “Forget God. They need to help themselves.”

“Excuse me?” demanded Mr. Martinez, and Hannah, remembering what Professor Burbage had said about Christians being overprotective of their faith, hastily said, “Father, please.”

He only shook his head at both of them. “It’s unpleasant to hear, I know, but you have to face up to what’s going on in the world. My wife and your friends have been murdered.”

“You think we don’t recognize that?” Mr. Martinez demanded, very angry, and Hannah didn’t blame him. “You think, because we believe in God, we somehow haven’t paid attention?”

“No, no,” Hannah protested. “It’s just that...” But she didn’t know what to say next.

“Oh, what were you doing in England anyway?” Francesca snapped at her. “Are you those kind of rich snobs?”

Hannah’s father’s only response was to inform her that Hogwarts was in Scotland, not England, which obviously didn’t help at all, so Hannah said, “No, actually, we’re under an obligation of magical honour.”

“A what?”

“Magical honour,” repeated her father, and they looked at each other, each needing an easy way to explain what they were talking about. He seemed to then decide to tell the whole story. “Back in the early 17th century a certain ancestor of ours, one Sir Edward Thuland, did a great wrong to another man. We don’t know who, how, or even exactly when. All we know is that the man then said to him, ‘For honour, all of your firstborn must live in these isles, but never call them home,’ and the laws of the time allowed him to magically bind Sir Edward to comply with this demand. By firstborn, he meant Sir Edward’s firstborn child, then that child’s firstborn, and so on and so forth, up to myself and Hannah. It’s been typical for members of our family to fulfill the obligation by doing their schooling at Hogwarts; Hannah’s been there the past five years, so she’s done that.”

“Surely such a thing isn’t still enforced,” Mrs. Martinez protested. “The law still isn’t in effect, is it?”

“No,” said Hannah’s father, “the obligations are no longer made. But the binding can’t be broken. My mother actually defied the obligation; after she divorced my father she fell in love with a man in England and moved there permanently to be with him. Both of them and their son suffered terrible fates.”

“So you mean your family is trapped?” Francesca asked, horrified. “Forever? Wizarding law actually allowed that at one time?”

“Actually,” said Hannah, “I had a conversation about this once with another girl. Her name was Shannon, and she came from a really old family on her mother’s side which once had a similar obligation in their line, and she told me that according to law there had to be something a descendent could always do to lift the obligation. Someone in her family did it early in the 20th century and now they’re free. She suggested that if we could find out what Sir Edward did, we might be able to try to lift it. But we have no idea...”

“So not a very good situation,” her father concluded.

“If I had been your ancestors,” commented Francesca, “I would have kept my records better!”

While they had been talking, the Martinez family had also been taking clothes out of Francesca’s trunk and sorting them into piles on her bed. Her school robes were laid out carefully, her cloaks next to them, her casual robes were bundled on the other side of the cloaks. While she had no Muggle outerwear, which was a little surprising, there was a quickly growing pile of Muggle panties, as well as plenty of socks and stockings. Her shoes were already lined up at the foot of the bed.

Out of another suitcase her mother now took a bedside clock and when Hannah saw the time on it she exclaimed, “Nearly five! Where did the time go?”

“Do you need to be anywhere tonight?” asked Francesca.

“Well I told my friend Alfred that I would meet him for dinner at six. Would you like to come eat with us?”

“Sure, if I can get everything put away quickly enough.”

“Do you want me to help?” Hannah asked, standing up.

“Um...” Francesca looked from Hannah to her father, though Hannah couldn’t think why she looked so nervous. “Maybe you could get my clothes for me? The robes and cloaks all go in my closet, and all the piles go in their own drawer-I’ll get the hangers out. Underwear top drawer, nightwear second drawer,” she pulled out a nightgown as she spoke, “then socks and tights.”

“You’ve got this well-planned, don’t you?” Hannah noted as she scooped up two robes.

“And you don’t?” Francesca asked, surprised. “How do you live?”

“You can’t do that at Hogwarts,” Hannah explained, hanging the robes up. “The dressers don’t appreciate it. On the morning you oversleep you’ll hastily reach for your clothes and discover the drawers have all changed places and the top drawer is now the bottom drawer.”

“And noone does anything about that?” asked Mrs. Martinez.

For a moment the question confused Hannah, and that was far from hidden her response. “It...never occurred to me that they should, actually. You get used to it, and then you don’t really mind anymore. Besides, if you tried to change all the things at Hogwarts that behaved like that, even if it was possible to do so, which I don’t think it is, it would take you...oh, I don’t know, ten years at least. Not to mention they don’t even keep record of all the castle’s idiosyncrasies. I don’t think anyone knows about all of them, except maybe the house-elves. Maybe not even them.”

“It’s really not that bad,” her father added. “During my time there, I even grew to enjoy it.”

“And did you enjoy it?” Francesca asked Hannah. “If you did, I’m afraid you’ll miss it here.”

“‘Enjoy’ isn’t a good word for it,” said Hannah. “But I think I will miss it, one way or the other.”


	2. Seven Classes a Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hannah's first night and first full day at her new school.

When Hannah brought Francesca down to the dining hall to introduce her to Alfred, she found that he, too, had brought his roommate, Max Greene, as well as another blonde girl, Sappho Linnett, who was a sophomore and a longtime friend of his. Both bombarded Hannah with questions about herself, about her family, and especially about the situation on the other side of the Atlantic. Hannah told them all she knew.

Max Greene was a short boy, with fluffy black hair and a cheeky smile. He had a pair of Muggle grandparents, but Alfred quickly told Hannah that he hadn’t learned much from them, and while, like most young American wizards and witches, he had gone to Muggle elementary school, he had forgotten almost everything he had learned there too. “When we first roomed together last year,” he said, “he thought Muggles didn’t have radios. He was stunned to hear they actually invented them!”

Sappho, on the other hand, was not only pureblood, but had been raised in a wizarding commune here in the Catskills. “Never met a Muggle in her life,” said Alfred. “I want to introduce her to my parents.”

“That’s really rare,” commented Hannah. She didn’t say so, but she also initially was wary while shaking hands with Sappho. She knew most wizarding communes had been founded out of a wish not to be associated with Muggles, and while obviously Sappho couldn’t be too prejudiced against Muggle-borns if she was friends with Alfred, she had seen all too well over the last five years what even subtle blood-prejudice had done in Britain, as well as outright prejudice.

But Sappho was very nice, and she expressed the same horror about what was going on in Britain as everyone else. “The worst thing is,” she said, “is that there are people I grew up with who might agree with his ideals. Not with killing or anything like that,” she hastily added, “but, you know...”

There were three long tables in the dining hall, draped with white tableclothes and with too many candles suspended above them, as well as a shorter one that looked like the staff table. The five of them needed some time to find five unoccupied seats all next to each other, but then they settled down. For the first time Hannah took a good look at the walls, and saw they were covered with one large Dutch mural, on which 18th-century Dutch people wandered from wall to wall, stopping to talk to each other and survey the students, ducking under the high windows and dancing their way up towards the ceiling, which was decorated with a map of New England, with the various magic schools noted as deep sapphire blue stars.

Shortly after they sat down Mrs. Hesselwin came over and asked, “Do you know where the Observatory is, Miss Abbott?”

“The Observatory?” asked Hannah, confused. Why would she need to know where some Observatory was?

“For Astronomy,” Mrs. Hesselwin told her impatiently. “You need to be there at midnight tonight, and do you know where it is?”

“It’s okay,” Alfred offered. “I’ll show her.”

“Thank you, Mr. Fadton. Also, Miss Abbott, I want you in the Goblin's Cellar in the North Wing tomorrow morning at 7 on the dot for your Potions assessment. You’re roomed in the North Wing, so I think you should be able to find that without any trouble.”

“Will I?” Hannah whispered to Alfred when she was gone.

“That one’s not too much trouble,” he told her. “Just go down the stairs until you see the inscription above the door. There were once a bunch of goblins who planned a rebellion in that celler, so it got named to commerate that.”

Just then the sound of a bell ringing came from nowhere in particular, and the room fell silent. Hannah was so used to this kind of thing beginning her school year that she didn’t have to think before turning towards the staff table, and was startled to see a number of the other students looking at each other in confusion. She saw several people take a hold of their classmates and turn them towards the staff table, and a couple of people look at each other anxiously. Nearby, she thought she heard someone say, “Whatever this is, I don’t think it’s good.”

Mr. Bobwhite had risen to his feet. When silence reigned, he took a moment or so longer than was really necessary to speak.

“I am afraid,” he said, “that I have a very grave announcement to make. As not everyone is here yet, I will repeat this announcement at breakfast tomorrow morning. Some of you may have already heard this, but I will now confirm it for those who are not sure. It is my unpleasant duty to inform you all that Adeline Mayfair, who would have begun her junior year here with us, was found dead with her family on September 3, and we have reason to believe, though no absolute proof, that they were killed by Death Eaters.”

In the middle of the resulting flurry of reactions, the gasps, the shocked exclamations, the urgent conversation, even the crying, two thoughts warred for control of Hannah’s mind. The first was that the principal was lying to his students. Or possibly to himself, but if the Dark Mark above them wasn’t proof of Death Eaters, Hannah didn’t know what was. Noone else even knew how to generate that symbol, or so she'd always been told. The second thought, which won the battle between the two thoughts, was that if they had been found on the third, that pointed to them having been killed the night before, the same night her mother had probably been killed.

Mr. Bobwhite called for silence again, and after a minute or so he had it. “I know,” he said, “that this must be an extremely upsetting and frightening thing to have happened. Those of you who had Adeline Mayfair for a friend will not forget her easily, and nor will anyone else. How she may have died, furthermore, is a reminder of the troubling times we now face, all of us, all over the world. The violence may be concentrated in Britain, but no country is certain to escape the clutches of this darkness. And nor should this be a menace which we just ignore. As wizards and witches ourselves, we must remember that what happens to one of us, happens to all of us.

And now we will remember our classmate. Take time to think about Adeline Mayfair, as we pause for a moment of silence in her memory.”

Having never met Adeline Mayfair, Hannah felt only general regret, and as the dining hall fell silent, she instead could think only of her mother. She thought of her earliest memories of her, of bedtime stories read and scraped knees healed. One of her more vivid memories came to her, of her smiling at ten-year-old Alfred after they had tested for and confirmed his magical ability, laughing at how dazed he had appeared. She remembered the tight hugs with which she had always greeted her when she had come home from Hogwarts for the year, her dismay, though, when she had come home after that first year and cried out “Mum!” because she’d trained herself to imitate Ernie’s accent to avoid being teased; her mother had exclaimed, “Louis, our daughter’s turned into a Brit!” It had felt wrong when she’d arrived in Kennedy two days ago, and she hadn’t been there to hug her and tell her how much she’d grown.

Beside her, Francisca was once again in tears. Hannah placed her hand over her and offered her a handkerchief; her new roommate nodded her thanks.

“I hope,” Mr. Bobwhite finally concluded, “That Adeline will live on in the hearts of all of you who knew and were friends with her. A final toast.” He clapped his hands, and glasses of water appeared in front of everyone. “To Adeline.”

Again vivid memories beseiged Hannah, when less than a year and a half ago she had risen a glass with the population of Hogwarts to Cedric Diggory. It was hard to believe it had been so recently; the past year had felt like two years, and the past week like three. Had she remembered Cedric enough, the way she should have, the way Professor Dumbledore had told them to? It would be harder now, when she was no longer among her fellow Hufflepuffs, when there wasn’t anything around to remind her. One of Cedric’s more artistically talented dormmates had sketched him, and the resulting portrait was displayed in the Hufflepuff common room. When she had gone to get her suitcases she had looked at it, but he’d been out, and he hadn’t come back when she’d come back down with them either.

Cool drops of water floated past her lips as she drank. At Hogwarts they’d been allowed wine for the toasts, both to Cedric and to Harry Potter. Afterwards Susan had identified it as special wine that couldn’t get them intoxicated or damage their brains, kind of like an extremely weak butterbeer, which of course no one had hesitated to serve to students of only thirteen. Briefly she wondered what things had been like in France, at Beauxbatons, for there had once been a young man who had told her tales on that subject. But he had turned out to be a piece of shit, and she didn’t want to think about him too much.

Food had appeared while they drank, and at the rich smells Hannah was surprised to feel herself hungry for the first time since she’d heard of her mother’s death. She had the feeling the fare here wasn’t going to be as good as it had been at Hogwarts, but she didn’t care.

####  **September 9, 1 AM**

She found Alfred waiting for her on the third floor landing, right next to the little room where they stored the mini-scopes and bigger celestial maps. “You’re still up!” she exclaimed, her surprise breaking even through her absolute exhaustion.

“Your roommate mentioned you hadn’t been able to sleep much,” he said. Hannah had planned on taking a nap right after dinner, but she had found out that with more students and them all housed in the same part of the building, things were far more chaotic and louder outside; it took too long for her to get back to her room and too long for her to fall asleep when she was there. “And this would be the time of night when the jet lag kicks in, wouldn’t it?”

“No, actually, I haven’t suffered too much from jet lag this time. I slept through the entire flight home.” It had shocked her she’d been able to do that, but then again, when she thought about what had been going on in the world even before her mother had been killed, it was a little incredible she’d never lost sleep at night. Maybe deep down her mind knew when she needed it. “But really, you shouldn’t have stayed up, Al. Classes start tomorrow.”

“Let me at least make sure you get back to the dorm safely. Unfortunately I can’t go into the hall with you-no opposite sexes in each other’s dorms from 9 PM to 9 AM-but just to make sure you get there. You really do look that tired, Hannah.”

“I am that tired,” she agreed, and meekly followed Alfred down the stairs. “At least I tested into your year. Mrs. Hesselwin wasn’t that pleased, so I don’t think I passed by much, but she told me I passed.”

“They should have let everyone take that exam over,” said Alfred. “Didn’t you say even the guy overseeing it got distracted?”

“Admit they’d tried to chase out a teacher who could have legitimately stayed on as the groundskeeper anyway in the middle of the night? The Ministry would never have allowed it. Even now, you know, Ernie talks about how we all ought to get apologies, but even Harry Potter they only apologized to indirectly. He even says I might have done better on my O.W.L.s, calls me robbed...” She shook her head as she dissolved into worn giggles.

“That’s awfully nice of him,” Alfred observed, which made her giggle even more. “No, really, Hannah, it is. And I know you don’t think so, but it’s not impossible he’s right.”

They’d reached the bottom of the tower and were ascending again towards the dorms when Hannah said, “That’s not what I’m mad at the Ministry for now, though.”

“They treated you pretty badly on the way back to Heathrow, didn’t they?”

“No, that was the representative from the National Ministry.” Hannah didn’t know why the American representative had been a National man; one from the New York Ministry would have made more sense, but he had been there and behaved just as she would expect such a man to behave; the British representative had actually been very kind and helpful. “No, I was talking about what happened with my half-Uncle.”

“You’ve never wanted to talk about that,” he had to comment, because Hannah’s general attitude had always been that she hadn’t wanted to think about anything that had happened to her personally that year. Bad enough that it had ended with the Dark Lord returning. “That was disgraceful, though, I absolutely agree, that they put a fifteen-year-old girl in that position.”

“Yeah, and I didn’t even realize it back then. Not the way I do now. I’ve been thinking about it a lot since...” She drifted off; now she had a new subject she didn’t want to talk too much about; even though it hurt to keep it all bottled up inside too.

“I feel like now everything really has changed,” she said. “I should have when I was at Hogwarts last year, but I didn’t. I just do now.”

He stopped walking then, and stepped over to her and hugged her. She was so glad for that, for the strength with which his arms squeezed her, for how warm he was, and for how she could feel his sympathy and how he wished he could make it better.

And then the moment was broken when they heard the sound of chittering, and several cracks in the air, and Alfred pulled away yelling, “Stupid house-elves!”

“Will you get in trouble?” Hannah asked anxiously. Of course she was supposed to be out there, but they might punish him for being out without an excuse.

“Don’t think so; I think the curfew only requires Juniors and Seniors to stay in the building. But the house-elves here are big gossips. They see students hugging and...”

“Oh no...” Hannah groaned along with him. They’d been enduring teasing and questions since she’d first walked up to him in the elementary schoolyard when noone else had wanted to talk to him. At one point she’d even gotten used to it, but now that they’d been spending most of the year on different continents for so long, she wasn't used to it anymore.

But as they were now doomed to songs and jokes, at least it made no difference if they continued their way back to the dorm close together, or if she put her hand on his arm as they reached the barred wooden doors. “You put your hand on the doorknob,” said Alfred, “and it’ll Apparate you in side-along style.”

British wizarding safety regulations would have forbidden something like this, Hannah thought as she gingerly placed her hand on the bronze knob. When nothing happened for a few seconds, she started to ask, “Alfred, do you think-” but suddenly she felt as if her hand was being sucked into the door, followed by her arm, then her entire body was being squeezed until she couldn’t breath, she was shoved against her arm and she thought her skull was going to be crushed, and then next thing she knew she was standing on the other side of the door, with her hand laid against the other side of the doorknob.

That had to be what Apparition felt like; with the recent murder of her Aunt, Susan’s parents had started moving about with her as much as possible, and she had described similar experiences from side-along Apparition in one of her letters to everyone. She supposed everyone here was used to being thus squeezed into their dorms after Astronomy class, at the very least, but it took her a few seconds to fill her lungs back up with air, and after that she ran her hands along her arms and legs and face, beset by a random fear that she’d somehow been splinched.

Alfred knew she hadn’t ever done that before, so he called through the door, “All straightened out? You’re okay? Not too dizzy?”

Well, she’d definitely been too dizzy a moment ago. But as Hannah breathed in, she was able to nod to herself, and yell back, “I’m fine, thanks. Good night.”

Francesca has waited up for her, too; when Hannah started fumbling with the magically proofed lock she got up and opened the door for her. Again Hannah chided her for staying up.

“You would have woken me up anyway,” said Francesca, “I sleep light. You don’t snore, do you?”

“No, but sometimes I wake up early, and of course I have to get up early tomorrow. I can’t believe they have a dorm here which Apparates everyone who’s out after nine. That’s not healthy for the growing body.”

“Really?” asked Francesca. “I’ve never heard of that. Though except for Astronomy classes, freshmen and younger aren’t supposed to be outside the dorms after nine anyway. You can get in big trouble if you’re caught out there and you’re too young. Though of course to get back in you have to admit you were out, and I’ve heard of some of the boys hiding in closets all night to avoid that.”

Hannah had the feeling Francesca had never set foot outside the dormitories on nights when she didn’t have class. She doubted Alfred had ever broken the rules either. Max or Sappho might have; she might ask them if she got curious. But none of them had ever needed to.

As she climbed into her bed and they blew the lanterns out, Hannah contemplated the significance of that, of this place, set so far away from the fear and violence of Britain even when a single student or her mother was found dead. They might feel the impact of Adeline Mayfair for a week, maybe a little longer, but she knew now from experience they wouldn’t remember her as much as they were supposed to. On that regretful thought she slept.

####  **8:15 AM**

Hannah was still exhausted. She hadn’t even felt this tired after the O.W.L.s, or any late nights with the DA. A rigourous Potions exam hadn’t helped, though at least she’d passed; it hadn’t been that hard, thankfully. If she hadn’t had Alfred with her she would never have been able to get to class. She was worried, though, about what would happen in about an hour and a half’s time, when their schedules diverged.

Each class was fifty minutes long, with ten minutes to get from class to class. First period was Transfigurations 6, which she had also tested into somehow; she didn’t know how. Second period was Divination 4, which was going to be a bit of a climb, though Alfred’s account made it sound like less than the hike up to Professor Trelawney’s tower. At least he’d be there to guide her, but for third period she went to Muggle Studies 4, which he, being Muggle-born, didn’t really need, so he went to Arithmancy instead. They reunited after that, though, for Potions 6, before lunch(which Hannah thought was a stupid piece of scheduling; Potions always made her lose her appetite and not just because it had been taught by Professor Snape), then the afternoon had Defense Against the Dark Arts 6, Charms 6, and finally Herbology 6 ending the day, which she did like.

What she didn’t like was the general format. She hadn’t minded it back in elementary school, but Muggle subjects were okay with it, while magical subjects weren’t. She didn’t get, for instance, how they were supposed to do anything with the complicated kinds of plants that she assumed Herbology 6 featured(the Hogwarts equivelant had, after all) in only fifty minutes. And as for trying to make a potion in fifty minutes, well, Hannah could hear Professor Snape throwing a fit from across the ocean. The others subjects she thought could work with it, but meanwhile, she thought having only ten minutes between classes was going to drive her crazy. The worst bit was right after this first period, when she’d have to go half the length of the school and up three winding staircases. She hoped she wouldn’t have to use the toilet.

Max and Francesca had both gotten there before them, and there were thankfully two empty desks between them. As they sat down, Alfred said, “Hey, Max, you have Muggle Studies after Divination, right?”

“Yep,” said Max.

“Well, Hannah needs help getting there today, and I can’t take her because I’ve got Arithmancy, so could you?”

“Sure,” said Max. “But it’s really not hard, Han, you just have to remember to use the smaller door when you reach the bottom of the tower.”

“Han?” Noone had ever called her Han before. It was the name of one the main male characters from one of Alfred’s favorite movies; that made it sound weird.

“He nicknames everyone, Hannah,” said Alfred, just as a tall, thin man with a very bushy mustache walked into the room. “That’s Mr. Rivers,” he whispered.

Several people giggled, and he raised his eyebrows and inquired, “Miss me?” No answer from anybody. “I see we have a new face here.” Attention turned to Hannah. She’d have to deal with this all day, she realized, but she still felt embarrassed. “And, unfortunately, one face gone.” Attention away from Hannah, who looked anxiously over at Francesca. Her roommate had bent her head, and as Hannah watched, she moved her hand across her chest in a pattern that Hannah thought she might have seen somewhere...in Muggle Studies at Hogwarts, maybe? She was too tired to remember.

“Sad, obviously...but if the entire world is indeed under threat, that is only reason to attend to your studies all the harder, since now the knowledge might just save your life.” Hannah heard a skeptical grunt somewhere behind her, but thinking about some of the spells Harry Potter had emphasized in the DA, and what he’d said about the Disarming Charm saving his life once, she herself thought he might be right.

“So we will start with a little review, since unfortunately you were required to neglect your wands for over two months.” He sounded like he disapproved of this. “So we will start with Vanishing. I hope you remember the definition of it, at least the short one.”

After her disastrous encounter with this during the O.W.L.s the previous spring, Hannah was unlikely to ever forget the textbook definition of Vanishing, though this didn’t mean she could do it. She raised her hand, just as from the back, someone said, “The elimination of an object from existance, usually by dissolving it into air molecules.”

“Thank you, Mr. Radlowski. Yes, Miss...” He momentarily couldn’t remember her name.

“Nothing,” Hannah squeaked, turning red, and trying to hide her shock. No one would have dared speak without being called on first at Hogwarts.

“Miss Nothing, then, is that your name?” He muttered it as if absent-minded, which caused half the class to laugh. Hannah flushed with further embarrassment, then with anger. “Seeing you come from Hogwarts, which I know teaches Vanishing much earlier than we do, why don’t you demonstrate for us?”

“What?” Trying to Vanish something in front of the entire class, when she was too tired and upset to concentrate? Her first day was turning into a nightmare.

“We’re starting out with Gobstones today.” More laughter, which Hannah didn’t understand at all. Had everyone except this teacher seen already that she couldn’t do this? “Surely you remember how to do it?”

Technically, she remembered how to do it. And Gobstones actually weren’t that hard either; she was surprised he was going back to something so basic, even for review. He had to go get them out from his desk, which gave Hannah a moment to remember all this.

It also gave a moment for Radlowski to say, “Think she’s better than us, doesn’t she? Hogwarts snob,” just loud enough to make sure she heard.

Hannah had already been angry, but at this insult to her, her school(well, it wasn’t her school anymore, but she was still thinking of it as her school), all her classmates and friends, and even to her family, though the boy might not know it, turned something in her cold, made her realize even more than she was fretting over nothing, that if she’d had to work with an animal again things might have turned hairy but a few Gobstones were no trouble at all. When Mr. Rivers put the Gobstones down, thankfully all touching each other, she had to tap them with her wand twice, more because she was so tired than anything else, but after that she had it, and they were gone.

“Well done!” exclaimed Mr. Rivers, as behind her Hannah heard murmurs of surprise, which made her indignant; had they thought her that bad? “Why don’t I get you a muskrat, while the rest of you try with more Gobstones?”

Hannah was not looking forward to working with a muskrat, but as he hurried out of the classroom to get it, she had a chance to watch her classmates work with the Gobstones, and what she saw stunned her. A couple of the students Vanished them as quickly as she had; one boy even did it without the tapping she’d had to do. But most of them were having real trouble. One one side of her Alfred kept only Vanishing one or two of the stones at a time; on the other Francesca kept getting half of each stone left(a weird sight), and on Alfred’s other side Max’s wand kept sending out sparks and burning the desk, but not Vanishing anything at all. She hadn’t even worried about being that ineffective; she’d figured if she messed up, it would be either by leaving one or two of the stones, or by doing something really crazy like she had during the O.W.L.s.

She wanted to ask one of them if the class was regularly at this level, but that would have hurt their feelings very badly. Besides, Mr. Rivers returned soon enough with the muskrat, and she had to first get her head around the spell to Vanish it, then force herself to cast it on a living animal.

She actually did it, towards the end of the class, when most of the class had finally successfully Vanished their Gobstones, but a couple of blokes near the back were still struggling with them. When each person had succeeded, Mr. Rivers had given them a bigger set of Gobstones, which made Hannah angrily wonder why he’d given her something harder. Had she been too good; had it turned him sadistic?

But when he noticed, and exclaimed, “Oh look, Miss Hogwarts has done it!” a nickname that made her burn, there was another astonished murmur through the class. Hannah didn’t get it. Had they been watching her try to Vanish the poor animal the entire time when they should have been working on their Gobstones and seen how pathetic she’d been at it? That would at least explain why some of them had taken so long.

But then she looked at Alfred, and saw he was wide-eyed.

“What?” she asked, now completely confused.

####  **1:15 PM**

By the time she walked into Defense Against the Dark Arts 6, Hannah was starting to get it.

“I had no idea,” she said to Alfred as they sat down. “All right, I suppose I should have, but I mean, I failed three of the O.W.L.s I took. Surely I shouldn’t be the best in the class for two of those subjects at any school!”

“Well, it seems you are,” he was grinning, especially in anticipation of this particular class. The two of them had spent the summer with her teaching him some of the things she’d learned from the DA, and her E on that O.W.L. was the bright mark of her entire scholastic history. “Just be thankful we didn’t have to go to Liberty Island. The  _New York Scroll_  calls it the worst school on the Eastern Seaboard. New York State, on the other hand, they rank as fifth best.”

“You mean there are only four schools on the entire coast better than this?” Hannah shook her head in disbelief. “I heard Ernie make remarks about the American education system sometimes, but really, I’m shocked.”

“Then I suppose this class won’t be that exciting for you,” said Max as he joined them. “Or maybe it will be. Today we’re finally going to get to see illegal curses!”

“You find that exciting?!” In a day of shocks, nothing compared to what she’d just heard. “You actually find Unforgivables exciting? Watching spiders be tortured and killed is just going to be a show for you?!”

“Han, I didn’t mean...” Max started, but Hannah was too angry to hear him. He put his hands up, to no avail, as she rose to her feet and glared down at him.

“For your information,” she said to him, “I first saw the Unforgivables done when I was fourteen. I shouldn’t have; like here, Hogwarts is supposed to wait until later. But the Defense class had been hijacked by a Death Eater who also happened to be my half-Uncle, and disguised himself as an old Auror, not that I found out until nearly nine months later, when he’d been  _Kissed by a Dementor_  and they told me I had to decide what to do with what was left of him because all his family in Britain were dead and contacting my father would have made it too hard to hush it up!”

“Hannah, Hannah!” Max was yelled. “Calm down, everyone’s looking at you.” They were; she could feel it, now that she’d stopped yelling. It was like her first year at Hogwarts all over again.

But even her embarrasment couldn’t get her to be quiet, not over this. “And what’s more, I saw the aftermath of the Avada Kedavra curse on my MOTHER! And you know what? It was used too on her friend!” She pointed to Francisca. “And her friend’s family! Why can you not take them seriously?”

“We are taking them seriously, Hannah,” said Alfred, and reached out to calm her.

“I hope you are,” said a new voice from the door, and they all turned to see the teacher entering the room. Of course his eyes fell on her, in her black Hogwarts robes. “Hannah Abbott? Your reputation preceeds you.”

“That quickly?” remarked Francisca as Hannah turned pink.

“Merely a few remarks. Sit down, if you please; I’ll believe what I’ve heard when I see proof of it.”

Hannah kept her head high as she sat, for now she was aware not only was she ahead of the rest of the class, which meant little to her, but she was wiser than them too, and that meant more. She was starting to feel less embarrassed now, and more proud.


	3. Saturday Planning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hannah decides to pass on what she learned at Hogwarts

Oddly enough, finding the work easier didn’t make Hannah any less busy, those first two weeks at her new school. On the contrary, she might have been working more, because the others were constantly asking her for help. Francesca might not have been an idiot, in fact she was better at Potions than any of Hannah’s classmates at Hogwarts had been, but for some reason she was an absolute dunce at Charms. Max was academically weak as well, much worse than she had ever been, if only because he didn’t seem that willing to work to improve. Hannah sometimes debated with herself if maybe she should refuse to help him, but every time he advanced on her and asked, with a please, but in such a way that it seemed not to occur to him she might have a right to say no, she always found herself giving in.

Or maybe it was just that she didn’t mind at all being busy. Being busy meant she didn’t have to think about what was going on on the other side of the ocean. Being busy meant she had less moments to worry if something had happened to Ernie or Susan or especially Justin and Alice since she’d last received an owl from them(and obviously time passed while those owls went back and forth). Being busy especially meant she didn’t have to think about the fact that her mother was dead.

Even if a couple of mornings she woke in tears. But even that didn’t happen too often.

Francesca insisted on praying for her mother’s soul, and made a point of telling Hannah repeatedly that she was in her prayers every night. Hannah appreciated hearing it the first time, really she did, but the seventh time it began to honestly feel less like an expression of support and more of an indirect preaching of her own virtue as a Christian. She began to think more and more of the hatred and pain and even occasional death that Muggle religion had brought to witches and wizards throughout history, remembering more about the Salem Crisis that had led to the official adoption of the Statue of Wizarding Secrecy than she had for her O.W.L., and generally feeling the need to bite her tongue in her attempts to respect her roommate’s faith.

For the second Saturday after the year began, she accepted an invitation from Sappho to go flying over the woods surrounding the school grounds, maybe all the way to the Catskill peaks. She was shocked to hear Hannah didn’t own her own broom. “I thought you grew up in this state!” she exclaimed.

“I grew up in New York City,” said Hannah. “That’s different.”

When she mentioned the incident to Francesca, her roommate laughed, and said, “Sappho is a little sheltered. But it’s okay; you can borrow my broom. It’s a little uncomfortable, but it goes pretty quickly.”

Hannah wasn’t surprised to find Francesca’s broom was a Streamer. Streamers were relatively cheap brooms, manufactured and sold by a Connecticut broommaker which had been in business for sixty years, which were known for being very easy to control. They were a tried and true design that hadn’t changed much from when Hannah’s mother had purchased the broom she’d sometimes taken Hannah on when her daughter had been a toddler before it had broken and gone unreplaced. When Hannah saw the familiar label on the broomtail, her hands and heart clenched a little once more.

Sappho raised her eyebrows when she saw what Hannah had showed up with on the stairs, but said nothing. She had a proper racing broom, an imported Nimbus 2001(more than one of her classmates had informed Hannah Americans were hopeless at making racing brooms), which might serve her in good stead. Hannah was aware she had narrowly missed making the school Quodpot team the previous year, and that she would be going to the tryouts held later that day. This was just a friendly ride for Hannah, but for Sappho, it served as a vital warm-up.

On the red brick steps to the school, with them both nearly blinded by the morning fog, Sappho did the whole thing properly too; while Hannah was content to merely throw her leg over her broom and nudge herself lazily up, Sappho actually summoned her broom into her hand first, the way almost noone did once they’d learned the basics of flying, and kicked off so hard she’d shot off into the fog, then whirled around and come back, all before Hannah had even gotten five feet off the ground.

“I’m sorry,” said Hannah softly. “I’m afraid I’m going to be holding you back.”

“Not too much, I hope,” said Sappho. “Come on, let’s get above this stuff.”

The fog shrouded much of the Dutch-style building; only the higher towers built into the sides poked above the white sea. When Hannah popped above it; Sappho patiently waiting for her, she was stunned to see how few clouds there were higher in the sky. Below her she could see dimly the roof of the school’s low-set center, around which the ground itself rose on both sides, so the juncture where the dormitories were placed on top of their lower levels was visible above the mist’s top. Beyond that tower there was more white, which eventually gave way to the dark green of the woods, which climbed up the surrounding mountains.

“What do they call those woods?” asked Hannah.

“What?” Saphho looked confused. “I don’t think they call them anything. I suppose they call them something at Hogwarts.”

Hannah’s cheeks burned, but as they made for the green, she ended up telling Sappho about the Forbidden Forest, and about centaurs, and she was intrigued to hear that Hannah had actually seen a centaur, of which there were very few in North America; there was a small community of them up in Canada somewhere, but that was all. “It all sounds much more exciting than our woodlands,” she said. “No dangerous beasts in there, and in fact, students can go in and out as they please, and you have to to get your homework done for Herbology 7. It’s a place you want to wear good leggings and boots in, though. There are rumors of unicorns, but personally I don’t believe them.”

As she spoke beneath them the fog began to thin, and the trees became visible. There were a lot of maple trees, mixed with spruce, hawthorn, and especially ash. Hannah had never seen the Forbidden Forest from up above like this, only its edges from the grounds; she thought it looked less gnarly and twisted than what trees from the latter she had looked at.

Next to her Sappho was continually speeding up and slowing down, dipping down to look at the trees, then darting back up at steep angles, looping around and nearly colliding with Hannah until the latter wished she’d knock it off. She was a natural on a broom, but she flew with a certain swagger and heedless grip to her broom that Hannah had once heard Madam Hooch say was likely to get a flier colliding into the tree they hadn’t thought to check for. She pinned her hair loosely, unlike Hannah, who now normally twisted her hair up into a bun, so that it kept getting whipped in front of her face, but she seemed to have no trouble navigating. It was she who plotted their course; and she spoke of a stream, and a clearing.

They were going at a leisurely pace, taking time out to see the tallest of the trees with their broad old branches and deeply colored leaves, the first of which to fall were blown off by their tailwind. One gust of harder wind sent a whole flurry of red and yellow leafs flying upward; a flick of Sappho’s wand and they surrounded the two girls who charged through them. Hannah laughed as she soared through the beautiful leaves, dove after them as they beckoned to her, let them fall around her and flick off her new spring green robes, her heart turned lighter than it had been in a long time.

“Hey,” called Sappho when they finally got tired of playing with the leaves and let them drift back down to their forest. “Is that smoke coming back there, from the east?”

It was, a thin stream of it, darker than one would expect from a natural fire. In fact, Hannah was reminded very strongly of Potions classes. “I think someone’s brewing something,” she said.

“Oh Hannah, don’t be ridiculous! I told you, there are no centaurs in this wood, nor anything else intelligent, and who would be all the way over there brewing a potion before nine o’clock on a Saturday morning?”

But Hannah was already swerving her broom over, taking the Streamer as fast as it would go, Sappho gliding lightly behind her. “Noone else lives anywhere near this valley?" she asked. "No villages, no communes, no nothing?”

“Noone,” said Sappho. “Who’d want to live so near a magic school?”

She asked the question as if it should be obvious why they wouldn’t want to, though it was an utter mystery to Hannah, who had never heard any complaints from anyone in Hogsmeade, not even in her third year when the proximity to Hogwarts was probably the reason they’d had to put up with the Dementors, and even heard countless shopkeepers say they liked the business. Something about the self-assured way Sappho asked angered her companion, who flew on without waiting for her to answer.

When they got closer, Hannah started to get pretty certain that she’d been right; even she knew a potion when she smelled it. And finally even Sappho exclaimed, “Well, I’ll be! And I think I know just who that is, too.”

Hovering above, Hannah could see three witches that looked about her and Sappho’s age, all wearing school uniforms: a tall redhead, a short blonde, and a black girl somewhere in the middle. She didn’t recognize them, but Sappho did: “Ah, Vivian Dett, Ophelia Elliot, and Beatrice Sitreen.”

“Those are the Chasers for the Quidditch team, aren’t they?” Hannah whispered. She did happen to know who they were, mostly because Vivian was from very near New York City, and Alfred had crushed on her hard back when they’d been fourteen; it was a little surprising they’d never met but there it was.

“Yeah,” Sappho whispered back. “Think they’re all that. But the Quidditch matches never sell out, not like the Quodpot matches do. Up in New England maybe they do.”

But she wasn’t being quiet enough; the three girls looked up, and the black girl called, “Who’s there? It’s not you, Brian, is it?”

Hannah didn’t know why she didn’t have the urge to flee. She wasn’t even sure why she wasn’t prompted to by the  _whoosh_  that indicated Sappho was doing so. But instead she just floated slowly down.

Much to her relief they didn’t seem to recognize her; with her black Hogwarts robes she’d stood out a bit more than she’d wanted to that first week. More surprising was what she recognized: the potion. The valerians lying to the side and the ground up yellow power floating on the surface meant some sort of sleeping potion, and she remembered just where she had seen that color of smoke before. During her final days as a Potions student, when one of the last concoctions Snape had taught them to make had been a delayed sleeping draught, one that took effect about an hour after it was drunk.

They must have seen her staring at the cauldron, because the black girl demanded, “Who are you? Did somebody send you here?”

She sounded hostile, and again, Hannah supposed she ought to be retreating, but somehow she just didn’t want to. “No,” she said. “I was out for a morning flight and saw the smoke.” If they’d heard Sappho’s flight and asked her about it, she decided, she wouldn’t lie, but maybe they hadn’t, and she had the feeling hearing about a girl so associated with the Quodpot team being there would make them really angry. “You’re not brewing that potion to cheat, are you?”

“Of course not!” exclaimed the indignant redhead. “We’d never do that!” Hannah found herself believing her, at least mostly.

“Really, are you an idiot?” asked the blonde girl. “We’re not the first students to come in here to brew a potion and we won’t be the last. Now will you please go away and leave us alone?”

Hannah knew not to fight when she wasn’t wanted, so she said, “All right, but I better not hear about your next opponents falling asleep in the middle of the match,” and flew away.

Sappho had been circling the area and Hannah rejoined her quickly enough. She learned from her that Vivian Dett had been the black girl, Ophelia Elliot the blonde, and Beatrice Streen the redhead. “I actually knew Beatrice a little when we were both children,” she said; “Her family lived in Ash’s Valley when I was seven. But I don’t think I’ve talked to her in years.” As for the potion, she shrugged and said, “Prank. The Quidditch players love to prank each other. Sometimes they even go after the Quodpot team too, but that’s not something they do often. Thankfully.”

####  **That Afternoon**

New York State didn’t have any big common rooms like Hogwarts; instead they had two lounges and a number of quieter study rooms. Three o’clock in the afternoon saw Hannah seated in one of them, writing out the ingredients to the same potion draught she’d seen the Quidditch Chasers brewing earlier that day. She hadn’t done very well with it the last time she’d tried to brew it, but remembering how it was supposed to be done seemed easier, now, than it had in Snape’s dungeon. Mr. Barrows, the Potions teacher here, had not thought Hannah that impressive, but somehow she didn’t think he thought her a dunderhead either.

Alfred knocked on the door before he came in, which was a welcome difference from just about everybody she’d met at both her schools, except Ernie and Ruth Hemmings. “How’s it going?”

“Normal,” she answered. There was so little that had been at all normal about her life this past year. “I suppose you’ve finished this already.” Alfred was actually pretty good with Potions, which was really strange when he wasn’t so good at Herbology. Sure she’d known at least one infamous case of a Herbology expert who had been terrible at Potions, but for the opposite to be true made less sense.

“Actually...” he looked embarrassed. “I haven’t started that assignment yet.”

She was too nice to actually scold him, but she wasn’t pleased, and she didn’t try to hide that from him either. “I spent almost all the morning doing the Transfiguration homework, okay?” he pleaded. “I still don’t think my headache’s gone.”

“Get rid of it,” she said. “I thought you knew how to do that.”

“Not very well when I’m tired too.”

That made Hannah wish she could get rid of headaches. It was an ability Justin had developed and perfected back in January, and it had been godsend to everyone. Uneasily she wondered if her classmates might expect her to have special abilities like that.

“Anyway,” he said, “I thought you’d like to know Sappho’s made the shortlist. They’re going to have another tryout tonight.”

“That’s good,” said Hannah, but she knew it wasn’t much of a surprise; she’d done that last year too.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “By the way, did you know your roommate’s trying to convert me?”

“Oh no,” Hannah groaned. Alfred had actually been raised a Christian, but from a difference sect than Francesca, and anyway he hadn’t really practiced much since before they’d met. “I’ll tell her to leave you alone.”

“She might try to convert you,” Alfred warned her.

“After the quarrel my father got into with her and her parents she should know better,” Hannah laughed.

“She might not...”

“No, she must,” she insisted. “She’s not an idiot.”

“Right,” said Alfred, but he really didn’t seem to agree. But then he changed the subject to one that blew all other thoughts out of Hannah’s head. “So is it true you were part of a real Defense of the Dark Arts group, and that’s where you learned all you taught me this summer? That the whole Dumbledore’s Army thing was just something Albus Dumbledore said to keep you all from getting expelled?”

“How’d that get out?” Hannah demanded, shocked. Then a moment later, realizing she’d pretty much admitted it, she hastily felt along her face, but there weren’t any pimples breaking out. The more she thought about it, the more she thought maybe Hermione Granger had been going too far, doing that sort of thing, without even telling them either, and leaving her in fear of what would happen if she ever let anything slip to anyone. But she felt nothing break out. Maybe the jinx had expired.

“I don’t know,” he said, looked confused at her actions, as she wondered how to explain without freaking him out. “But I heard two different freshmen swear to it. I think one of them might have relatives in Britain, but I have no idea where the other one might have heard it from.”

“Who was this first one?” asked Hannah. She didn’t know if she really wanted to do a thorough investigation, but she was aware that if she didn’t, noone would. It made her feel very alone out in Upstate New York where she was.

“His name’s Milo Runcorn.”

“Runcorn! There was a Runcorn in my year at Hogwarts.”

“So maybe that’s how he knew. But my point is, Hannah, is I’ve been thinking. If you were in a Defense group, which Milo Runcorn was saying was led by no less than Harry Potter, then you must know even more than you had time to teach me, right?”

“I suppose,” she said hesitantly. “Though I wasn’t exactly its best student. I wasn’t that anywhere at Hogwarts.”

“Still,” he pressed. “I was already thinking there was a lot you could teach us all here. Remember, you know a lot more than we do. We could have our own version of the group.”

“How many would there be?” asked Hannah. The idea sounded like a good one, and something she sure ought to do. But she had doubts about her ability to teach a large group of people.

“Well, there’d definitely be me and Max, and I assume Fran. Probably Sappho too. Beyond that I don’t know.”

“A lot of our classmates don’t like me though, do they?” Hannah had to ask then. It was only to be expected when she knew more than they did.

“They’re fools,” said Alfred. “I really want to see who else we can find. There have to be some classmates with sense.”

“I suppose we should help everybody we can,” sighed Hannah, though deep down, she knew, she’d be relieved if they didn’t find anyone else. The four of them she thought she could handle.

She had nearly been done with the potion ingredients, and Alfred watched as she copied out the number of pine needles, then put her quill down and rubbed her fingers. “I don’t like this potion,” she felt like announcing.

He leaned over to see which one it was, and said, “Really? I thought you said you were happy when Hogwarts’ entrance hall got turned into a swamp.”

“Do you think they used that potion?” Hannah mused; she hadn’t thought of that.

“Don’t let anybody hear you talk that way,” Alfred grinned. “You have a reputation to hold up now, Han.”

“I don’t care about reputations,” she snapped, mildly irritated at the nickname. “I suppose people think I’ll be a good teacher too, just because I supposedly know so much. I mean, it was okay when it was just you...”

“Weren’t you a Prefect too?” Alfred pointed out. “You’ve been in a position of authority before.”

“That was different,” said Hannah quickly. “I was always with Ernie. He really did everything; I just backed him up. He always was the leader of our little group. He’s completely responsible for us all joining in the DA too.”

“Then maybe you could just do what he did? Him and Harry Potter?”

That actually didn’t sound too unreasonable. Hannah paused to try to remember what exactly they had always said and done. Looking back, what she could remember most about Ernie's behavior was that firm tone he always seemed to use, which worried her, because she wasn’t sure she could really do that.

Alfred took advantage of the pause to say gently. “You have to realize, Hannah, we need you. We don’t have Harry Potter or Ernie McMillan or anyone like that here at New York State. Even if you aren’t the best teacher, or best expert, or best guide, or best authority figure, or best person to harangue us into paying attention, you’re all we’ve got.”

For a moment she thought it was desperation that was straining his voice. But then she looked into his eyes, saw the wild fire in them, striking beneath the steep slants of his brow, and knew rather it was a wish to fight her battle; he still didn’t believe it might be his too, even after what had happened to Francesca’s roommate. She didn’t even know what to make of that.

But she understood his point. “We’ll do it,” she said. “I can’t promise you anything, but I’ll try.” She glanced down at her parchment again. “I think I’m just about done with this.”

“Want to see how the auditions are going? They should be close to wrapping up by the time we get down to the field.”

At some level, Hannah was aware that despite what it felt like, it wasn’t true that it took longer to get anywhere at New York State than at Hogwarts, and that on the contrary, the building was a lot less confusing and she’d probably get around faster once she was familiar with it. But she still wasn’t; she had to follow Alfred’s lead down two flights of stairs, up another short one, down a long corridor, and down a last flight of stairs that led to a side-door out. The morning fog had long burned away; it was a cool September afternoon where the sun’s glare was nonetheless so harsh her skin felt too heated within minutes. There were no trees on the grounds immediately surrounding the school, not like Hogwarts, where one was never further than five minutes walk, ten at most, away from some gnarled old plant with a history of three hundred years at the very least. The ground was less flat, though, rising and falling continually, and she couldn’t see as far as she could when looking from the Hogwarts steps.

So it was a couple of minutes before they spotted the pair of sleeping students, sprawling out on the grounds, one of them wearing what looked like Quidditch robes, carefully placed on knolls and away from rocks, and with their faces scribbled over to give them mustaches, and the one out of Quidditch robes instead wearing robes so loose his chest was exposed: it had  _The Wiz_  written on it.

The two of them stood over the two of them for a moment, just staring. “The team’s Beaters,” said Alfred.

“Should we wake them up?” Hannah asked.

“Not worth it,” said Alfred decidedly, and he began walking quickly away. Hannah, unwilling to just leave them there completely, tried a Cleansing Charm, but when the markings proved immune, she had to give up and hurry after him.

She ended up telling Alfred then about seeing the girls brewing the potion that morning, and he laughed, but added, “You know the Quodpot players probably helped them out. There’s a bit of friendly rivalry between the two teams. Well, usually friendly.”

It might be usually friendly, but to Hannah’s ears that didn’t sound so nice. Still, he knew a lot more about this place than she did, so she didn’t say anything more.

As they reached the pitch and climbed into the stands, Hannah saw there were now six players in the air wearing two different color vests, playing what looked like a miniature game, while a sixth student, a tall black boy with a very serious face, refereed and watched them closely. “Julius Morgantop,” Alfred whispered to her. “He’s team captain.”

Down below, Hannah saw an older wizard whom she thought might be a coach also watching, leg throw half over his broom, along with eight other students. “I think they’ve been chosen already,” whispered Alfred. “Six of them were on the team last year.”

Which meant two spots left, plus any reserves. But as the game went on, Hannah found herself relaxing. Sappho was clearly the best of the remaining six; she was faster and lighter on her broom and had a lot more control of it. When she finally got her hands on the ball and just flew around with it and kept it away from the others so long Hannah was left convinced it had to be enchanted to not explode at the moment, the coach and Julius Morgantop nodded at each other, and the older man blew his whistle and called her down.

As the competition among the remaining five for the final spot intensefied, Hannah found herself watching the ball closely, until she found herself musing out loud. “I don’t think that’s a quod. I think that’s a quaffle.”

“You think?” replied Alfred carelessly. He was focused on the game, and it wasn’t like he would likely be able to tell the difference. Hannah wasn’t the biggest expert there herself.

Nonetheless, by the time all five were called down and one last player and two alternates chosen from among them, she was convinced it was a quaffle. Megan Jones had brought one of her famous aunt’s old quaffles with her to school which had ended up constantly getting underfoot and confusing Ruth’s old cat Marina. Hannah had handled it more than often enough to recognize a quaffle when she saw one, even from a distance.

Maybe they thought it smarter to use a quaffle for the tryouts, she thought. Quods could be messy sometimes when they exploded, especially when they weren’t well-made, and Sappho had told her a few horror stories about the cheap mass-produced quods that schools were known to buy.

In any case, the tryout was now over, and she and Alfred were making their way down along with most of the crowd, heading towards Sappho. By the time they got down there, she was surrounded by three other girls, but she waved them over, introducing her companions as she did-Amanda Hess, Gabrielle Naughton, and Lucy Kennedy, and received their congratulations with warm thanks. “Of course you two will come to all the games now,” she smirked at them.

“We will,” said Hannah without hesitation.

“We all will, Sappho, you know that,” said Lucy Kennedy.

“We want to talk to you about something, though,” said Alfred. “Or rather, Hannah does.”

So soon, she wanted to ask. But Sappho was saying, “Sure, let’s go. Catch you girls later,” and all but yanked herself away.

It was right for them to start right away, Hannah reminded herself. After all, people like her mother had been murdered already.

It was that thought, in fact, of her mother, that sprung forth a sudden, hard resolve: that no matter how hard this was, she would not only do it, but she would do it well. Her mother deserved no less from her.

When they were out of hearing range, Sappho leaned in and said softly, “Thanks. I can’t say I’m sorry to get away from Amanda. She’s actually not nice at all.”

“Then why were you hanging out with her?” asked a confused Hannah.

Sappho looked equally confused by the question. “I couldn’t not. Didn’t you have girls like that at Hogwarts?”

“I think they all stayed in Slytherin Tower,” said Hannah. At any rate, she’d been safe from them in Hufflepuff.

“Lucky Hogwarts,” replied Sappho. “So what did you want to tell me?”

“I...” She’d just resolved to do this, but the problem was, Hannah didn’t even know where to start. Alfred squeezed her hand in encouragement, and she began. “I believe word has gotten around that at Hogwarts I was part of a group that studied and practiced basic and advanced Defense Against the Dark Arts, as Ministry of Magic interference wasn’t letting us learn it in class.” Again her hands touched her face; again she felt nothing. Looked like she was completely safe there.

“Word is going around about a lot of things,” said Sappho. “But wasn’t the official story that Albus Dumbledore was gathering you all to deal with the Ministry, because they were threatening to destory Hogwarts completely? You were called Dumbledore's Army, right?”

Hannah hadn’t heard anything about the Ministry actually trying to do the school in, but maybe the Ministry had just managed to keep the public from hearing about that part. At any rate, she clarified, “Dumbledore was nice enough to say that when we were caught, because if he hadn’t, we all would’ve been expelled. It was a good thing we’d actually decided to call ourselves that! As I said, I was in the group, and we learned a lot. Of course Mr. Jared’s fine as a teacher, and he certainly isn’t actively trying to keep us from learning anything the way that cow Umbridge was, but I still think if anyone wants me to teach them what I’ve learned, I should try to see if I can do that.”

“You’ll be two degrees removed from Harry Potter, too,” Alfred chimed in.

“That definitely sounds like a good idea,” said Sappho. “I assume Fran’ll be there too?”

“Probably,” said Hannah. “Though we haven’t asked her yet.”

“Do you want me to ask the rest of the team if they’re interested?”

At this question, Hannah had to hastily squash the impulse to say no, because it was too many people. The more, the better, she reminded herself. “Go ahead,” she said. “Don’t let them expect miracles, though,” she felt the need to add.

“Oh don’t worry,” grinned Sappho. “If you teach Defense Against the Dark Arts as well as you’ve learned it, they’ll see miracles as having happened anyway."


	4. Dumbledore's Army, North American Auxiliary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first meeting of Hannah's DA, and an ominous announcement from the principal.

It took another week to get everything together. It was easy enough to book one of the many practice rooms the school had for practical spellwork; certainly there was no need to keep it secret, and on the contrary, two teachers came to Hannah after class on Wednesday to express their approval of her helping her classmates out. Fran was on board immediately, and offered to talk to a few more people she knew. Sappho reported back that five people from the Quodpot team might come. In her spare time, Hannah found herself reviewing both her old Hogwarts textbook and her newer New York State text, trying to figure out where to begin. Harry had begun with the Disarming Charm, of course, and he’d said it had saved his life once, so maybe it wasn’t even that bad an idea, but she wasn’t sure she had his nerve. Then she found herself wondering how many of them knew it, then how many of them didn’t, and how was she supposed to know?

Sappho asked if it was really a smart idea to being just after lunch, when everyone was too full, but it didn’t matter much to Hannah; when they went down for lunch Saturday she could barely eat. All four of Alfred, Max, Fran, and Sappho walked her to the practice room saying encouraging things all the way, like how much she knew, and how impressed they all would be, which was all very well, but it didn’t explain how she was going to even  _speak_  when she got there. Her hands shook as she opened the door.

Her first thought was a stab of disappointment. There were only three other people there.

Her second thought was that they all looked older. “Okay,” she heard herself saying. “What do all of you know already?”

The other seven looked at each other. Were none of them even sure of what they knew? That was kind of weird. When an uncomfortable minute of silence had passed, Hannah decided to just go for it, “Do you all know the Disarming Charm, maybe?”

It was as she’d feared; several of them frowned, and one of the two boys in the room already said scornfully, “Of course we know that!”

But there was something about the blustery way he spoke that made Hannah strangely suspicious, and she found herself asking him. “Are you sure?”

He swaggered over and stood quite a bit taller than her, as he said, “Of course I am.” It should have intimidated her. But somehow Hannah found herself feeling less than impressed. She’d been sneered at by Severus Snape, Dolores Umbridge, and Desmond McMillan, after all. All she could think was they’d all been much more scary than him.

She even got an idea that seemed crazily a good one. “Do you know how to be prepared for it?” she asked, as within her robes she closed her hand around her wand.

“This is stupid!” he exclaimed; that he didn’t say he did was too telling to Hannah. He swerved away from her. “I told you, Ashley, this was a big fat waste of...”

 _“Expellimarmus!”_  It was ridiculously easy; his wand flew right out of his pocket and into her other hand. “What do you do without your wand?” she asked him.

“Wow!” said one of the other two girls. “How did you do that without even seeing where it was?”

“A Disarming Charm’s not like a Summoning Charm,” said Hannah. “It’s not the wand you focus on; it’s the wizard. It may seem like a little thing, but get someone’s wand away from them and the battle becomes a lot harder for them. Would you like to try it?”

They all wanted to, and Hannah felt herself settling down as one by one she set them against each other. In the process she discovered the boy’s name was Merlin Hersh, Ashley Covrobias was his girlfriend and one of Sappho’s teammates, and the third student was Josephine Shriggle, and she was the oldest of them in her seventh year. Yet she took the longest with what ended up being their first exercise, where one student hid a wand with their back turned to another student, who tried to get at it.

When at last she got Sappho’s wand to fly out of her belt and into her hand, Hannah felt a pleasing amount of accomplishment, but now she didn’t know what to do next. What had Harry done next? She couldn’t remember for the life of her.

It was Josephine who saved her, saying, “You know, I think, if maybe you know a bit about anti-jinxing and counter-jinxing...it’s just that Mr. Jess,” Mr. Jess was the name of their Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, “has always been a little weird about them, and I don’t know, but he just doesn’t make them that easy to understand.”

For a moment Hannah thought of that terrible book Professor Umbridge had made them read; she thought it might have said something about one of those, but she really hadn’t been sure. Then she remembered what they’d learned from the man at the time she thought to be Alastor Moody, and that was still very hard for her to think about.

But at any rate, Harry had covered the subject pretty well, and recalling his words about it, she said, “The two are actually quite different. Anti-jinxing is done before you’re jinxed, and counter-jinxing is done after, and the technique for counter-jinxing is actually a lot like the technique for jinxing, while anti-jinxing works completely differently.” She found it hard to believe none of them knew that already, but no one said anything; maybe they’d been grateful for the reminder. “I know Max is good at jinxing, right, Max?”

“Yes,” sighed a long-suffering Alfred, while Max just grinned.

“So what’s your best jinx?”

“That would be the Sea Crawler Jinx,” said Alfred.

“Hey,” protested Max, “I only did that once!”

“Which ones has he done more than once?” asked Hannah. From what she understood, the Sea Crawler Jinx turned the victim into some sort of sea creature, and she didn’t want to have to worry about how anyone was then going to be changed back.

“Mostly he tends to use Impediment Jinxes,” said Alfred. “Of varying strength.”

She’d have to use that; it was one of still too few jinxes where she was perfectly confident in her ability to both prevent and counter it. But it was one for which she’d had both Harry Potter and her half-Uncle for teachers, and when she looked at her memories, she remembered the latter’s teaching her about dealing with it better than the former’s.

“In that case,” she said, trying to keep her voice from shaking, because she knew that would make a bad impression, “why don’t you try an Impediment Jinx on me?”

It was almost scarily easy. She thought Max’s jinx was a relatively weak one when it hit her; the anti-jinx she’d done for them to see would have bounced off a far stronger one. She barely even felt the tingling that was the jinx trying to take effect. “You need to work on that,” she found herself commenting; she remembered how Harry had run them through some defensive jinxes as well as official counter-jinxes in the DA. “But first try it on me again.”

The second one was stronger, and a bit more sudden, too. But nonetheless she sent it back, and she even managed to get it on Max a little; she saw him stiffen from his own impediment as he tried to stride forward towards her. It was enough to make her feel a little proud. “Let’s see what the rest of you can do. We’ll take turns doing the jinxes.”

They were still working on it an hour later, when a tired Francesca pointed out the time, and Josephine Shriggle asked through panting breaths how long their sessions were going to be. That was one thing Hannah hadn’t properly thought out; the length of DA sessions had usually depended on when it was safe to slip through the corridors to the Room of Requirement and when it was then safe to leave. Harry had even brought an enchanted map of Hogwarts, apparently a hand-me-down from someone(what a hand-me-down!), which had showed where everyone in the castle was; Hannah remembered where they’d all gaped at their names crowded together in a room labeled  _Sometimes existing room_.

“I think an hour and a half to two hours is a good length,” said Alfred, who was pretty sweated on his long brow, with his thick hair undone from its ponytail and scattered about to frame his face in wild chestnut waves.

“It is,” Hannah was happy to agree. “So,” she said, “next Saturday, here again, same time?”

“Can’t,” said Sappho immediately. “Quodpot practice. Maybe a little later, at four?”

“I think this room’s booked by then,” said Max.

“I can book another one,” said Hannah, but that was another thing to think about, and she added, “What about the weekend after? If everyone can tell me when they’ll be available, I’ll book for then too.”

That worked even better then she’d hoped; she soon had times written down for the next three weeks, and some notes about possible meeting times for the following two. Though that made her feel more anxious, because it made it feel real that she wasn’t just doing this for a couple of hours one day, but that she had to keep on doing it, had to keep figuring out how and what to teach next, with no clear end in sight. “I’ll go to Mrs. Hesselwin right away,” Hannah told them, “before all the rooms get booked.”

“I’ll go with you,” said Alfred.

Ashley and Josephine exchanged one of those looks Hannah had seen on the faces of quite a few girls in company of herself and Alfred from elementary school onward. “Don’t,” she snapped at them, and regretted it a moment later when Josephine just grinned wider and Ashley giggled.

And Sappho, that traitor, merely lightly commented, “Now, now, let’s not go giggling at the lovebirds, Ashley.” Hannah threw her a dirty look that she was sure a good teacher would never be caught dead giving to anyone in front of her students, and tried not to stomp too much as she walked out, Alfred having to scurry to keep up with her.

####  **The Following Saturday**

She must have done a better job with the group than she thought, because all through the next week she got people coming up to her during meals or before class asking about the group and when the next meeting was. “Don’t expect all of them to come,” said Max at one point. “A lot of them will forget or just won’t bother.” Still, even if only half of them showed that would still be a lot more people than there’d been. Plus there’s been one first-year and three seniors, and okay, the DA had included a second-year, but they’d mostly all been able to go through all of Harry’s lessons together; if people kept joining on that was going to make things even more of a headache.

The morning of the lesson, after breakfast, found Hannah sitting on her bed, a piece of parchment in front of her on which she had written  _Lesson Plan_ , staring at  _The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection_  and two of Lockhart’s old books, which had mostly been about dark beasts & beings, which she was not ready to deal with. After two weeks of trying to write down everything she remembered over five years, she’d realized she’d learned almost nothing about Defense Against the Dark Arts her first two years at Hogwarts. Third year had been mostly dark creatures too(which seemed weird, after it had come out the teacher was a werewolf; maybe it took one to know them). After that she’d had two informative, if unusual, teachers(Umbridge didn’t count, obviously). She had a weird urge to owl Harry Potter and ask him for help, but surely he had more important things to worry about.

Even though it was possible half the class that would be there that afternoon wouldn’t have been there for it last week, Hannah decided eventually to continue where she’d left off. If anyone was confused, she was sure, they could ask her to explain things.

She was flipping through her spellbook after that, looking for any counter-jinxes they hadn’t at least touched on the previous week, when Fran came in; she’d been working on a Transfiguration assignment that Hannah had been neglecting for this, which might just be a problem; the thing with Mr. Rivers’ assignments was that she never knew beforehand how easy or how hard they were going to prove for her. But then again, she first thing Francesca said was, “Don’t worry; I found the Transfiguration work fairly easy.” Francesca actually was much better at Transfigurations than Charms, but that was encouraging. “How’s it going?”

“Not sure,” said Hannah, and she let Fran see her blank parchment. “Was there anything you wish we’d gotten to where we didn’t?”

“Actually,” she said, “I wish we’d spent more time on the anti-jinxes. We kind of got caught up in the counter-jinxes, which of course are a lot more fun and interesting. It might work to help introduce the newcomers to the course too.”

“Thanks,” said Hannah as she wrote down  _Anti-Jinxes_. From there it was surprisingly easy to start writing down types of anti-jinxes, and soon she had the parchment half-full.

She was so absorbed in writing that she didn’t notice at first that Fran, after getting up, didn’t go back to her own side of the room, but instead restlessly walked to the window and then to the door, then around and around. Her shoes clacked on the floor until it got annoying, and Hannah bit back the urge to tell her to quit it. Finally when the noise stopped, she looked up, almost as a reflex action, and saw her roommate staring down intently down at her, and before she could stop herself she snapped, “What?”

She regretted it when Fran nearly jumped back, but then she asked, “What was Harry Potter like? I’ve always wondered.”

“Like?” It was weird, but Hannah had stopped thinking about him along those lines long ago. He had been their teacher. “He was all right. His lessons were very good. He seemed a little impatient at first with us, especially when people were asking him about his adventures and I don’t think he liked to talk about those much, maybe sometimes you were worried he was going to lose his temper,” and oh dear, she was feeling like giggling, “but I think he got a little better about that eventually.” She paused for a moment, then, when she thought about he had at the same time gotten a little scarier, she wasn’t even sure how, but it was like he’d been grimmer as time had gone on, more driven, even as she and the others in the DA had actually felt themselves grow less scared, feel they were getting away with it, and getting more able to protect themselves, even though Hannah knew, realistically, that if she ever ran up against Death Eaters it would probably still end with her dead. “That’s all I can say about him, really; I don’t think I’ve ever talked to him too much outside the DA. Sorry,” she added, because she was sure that disappointed Fran.

“Well,” said Fran softly, “I’ll keep him in mind during my prayers anyway. I’m sure he needs it.”

Hannah was getting used to biting her tongue by this time. Francesca seemed to like to pray about everyone, maybe because they didn’t themselves.

To ignore it, she focused back on her parchment. She had just written  _Anti-Explosions_ , one of those spells that prevented a whole category of jinxes, but didn’t necessarily do so very well. She wondered if there was any information anywhere on which spells it protected from better than others. She asked Fran.

“Probably a book in the library,” suggested Fran. “Have you been to the library yet?”

Actually, Hannah hadn’t yet. It was a little weird, considering she’d practically spent every spare second in the Hogwarts library after the DA had been discontinued. “It’s on the fourth floor,” she said, “right?”

“Let me show you,” Fran said, and took her hand. Hannah nearly protested; she needed to get this done and she didn’t have time to root through ten different books. But the other girl was pulling her to her feet, with more strength than Hannah had thought her to have, saying, “Come on. You look like you could do with the walk too.”

They were out of the girls’ dorm and heading down one of the “flat” staircases, a staircase closer to horizontal than vertical that took all of a long corridor to get up or down one floor; one of New York State’s unique architectural quirks, when the building began to shake. “Don’t mind that,” said Fran. “It does that every month or so.”

“I don’t mind,” said Hannah. The castle had never done anything like that, but it still reminded her of Hogwarts.

It was done shaking by the time they reached the bottom of the stairs, and it turned out the entrance to the library was right next to that. It was a fancy archway, the broadest Hannah had seen at New York State, carved up with serpents & a pair of phoenixes at the top.

Inside it was much like the Hogwarts library; Hannah suspected all wizarding libraries were pretty similar places anyway. That made it a lot bigger than it had looked from the outside; they had come in on a mezzanine that wound its way around all four walls, large enough that Hannah had to strain her eyes to get a good look at the lines of bookshelves that stood there. Below them far more spread out were more shelves; lines and circles and even a couple of corkscrews worth of books probably held most of the collection. She could spot an enclosed area under the far side of the mezzanine that she supposed might be a restricted section. Access was provided by a staircase attached to the railing that slid up to them as they entered, then when they made no move towards it headed on to the far side of the mezzanine.

“Hope we didn’t need that,” Hannah commented as she watched it go.

“Don’t worry,” said Fran. “We just need to get to those windows over there. Turn right, two of the bookshelves on the left occasionally like to block people. I wonder what books are in them sometimes, but then I’m afraid to find out.”

Books on jinxes, anti-jinxes, and counter-jinxes turned out to be near the first of the blue stained-glass windows, and as Hannah looked through the collection of volumes, thankfully the memories of trying to figure her way through them the previous years came back, and she remembered two of them that had actually helped her a lot with that part of the O.W.L. She pulled out the smaller one, where she could remember exactly where she’d reach about Anti-Explosions. It was much easier, she thought, reading through something a second time. She should’ve done that more at Hogwarts.

Next to her, she heard Francesca sigh, “Oh no...”

She looked up, then towards where the other girl was looking. There were two boys there; they looked like seniors. They were both vaguely handsome, though their expressions weren’t; they were both wearing smirks that Hannah knew immediately were trouble.

Suddenly, she was indignant at having to deal with it. There she was, trying to help a few people in her home country fight against one of the worst dark wizards of all time, and these two boys wanted to bug her too. She didn’t have time for this.

“Who are you?” she demanded, surprised by how rough and hostile her words sounded.

“My name,” drawled one of the boys, he sounded too much like Draco Malfoy, except somehow he didn’t frighten her as much as the other usually had, “is Romulus Metlik. This is my friend, Avidus Monk. He’s the best at Transfiguration in the entire school.”

“Is he?” asked Hannah, not trying to hide her skepticism.

“Wanna test it?” Avidus asked her, leaning over and getting too close, but Hannah was too aggravated even to step back.

“No,” she said, “not against me. But I’d be interested in knowing if you’ve ever proven that.” It did occur to her that he might have, but she hoped he hadn’t.

Romulus, obviously displeased she wasn’t playing along, stepped in between them, and he did intimidate Hannah enough she stepped back, and hit the table, which really made her anxious, but also made her truly angry. “You, young lady,” he said, “are attracting a lot of attention, claiming to be so puffed up and important.”

“I’m claiming nothing of the sort!” Hannah yelled in protest. “I’m teaching important things, and I’m not sorry they’re important, and that’s all!” She bit back the temptation to yell at them to bugger off. She knew more than enough about bullies to know exactly how they’d react to that.

“Oh, really?” started Romulus. “Shall we-”

 _“Expelliarmus!”_  He stopped and whirled around as he wand flew out of his robes and into Francesca’s hand. Hannah briefly wondered if they were allowed to do magic in the library, but when Avidus pulled out his wand, she hastily grabbed her own and yelled the charm herself; it flew into her hands.

There were things the boys could’ve done even without their wands, at least in theory, but one look at their panicked expressions and Hannah knew they didn’t have it in them. “Shall we escort you out of the library?” she asked, trying to sound tough and dangerous. She didn’t very much, but the two boys seemed to quail anyway; looked like there really wasn’t much to them at all.

They tossed their wands back to the boys at the entrance; there was the worry they’d attack then but they didn’t, just scrambled away as fast as their legs could carry them. When they were gone, Francesca actually grinned, and said, “That was fun.”

That hadn’t been the word Hannah would’ve used for it, but she didn’t entirely disagree with her either. Instead she just said, “We have work to do, though. There are wizards in the world much, much more dangerous than those brats.”

“Romulus is one of the school’s worst, though,” Fran continued as they headed back to jinx section. “I think Al can tell you plenty about him; he was actually partnered with him for a project when he was twelve. From what I heard, he ended up doing all the work and everybody knew it except the teacher, who was an idiot. One would think that would change Romulus’ view of Muggle borns, since he owes his butt to Alfred, but, well, it didn’t.”

Hannah now recalled Alfred telling her that story the summer after her second year, how Romulus had continually insulted his work after ordering him to do things, how he’d first tried to be friendly but finally even stopped asking him for help and just done everything himself to avoid talking to him, and it seemed not one thing Alfred did could make one bit of difference in how Romulus acted or viewed him. It was something she would never understand, how people could be so prejudiced they refused to believe the truth even when it was put out right there in front of them.

The books proved very helpful, and Hannah checked out a more general defense book as well. She might still have to play things by ear, she thought as they left the library sometime later, but she was as prepared as she could be.

####  **That Night**

When she went down to dinner, all of Alfred, Francesca, Max, and Sappho were with Hannah, and the last was still limping from the day’s lesson, but everyone was smiling. Hannah could not doubt now that she was doing a good job.

As they entered the dining hall, several people Hannah had never met called a hello. One of them asked her when the DA would next meet and Max called back a response, since his voice was the loudest of all of theirs. By the time they sat down, Hannah had a bigger smile on her face than she’d had that entire week.

But the smile faded when they saw the looks on the faces of several of the people sitting near them. One hastily got up and moved to another table.

Once again it was Max who spoke, “What is it?”

A girl who had to be in her seventh year but Hannah didn’t know the name of said harshly, “Why are you doing this? Why are you risking attracting attention to our school from people who wouldn’t care about it otherwise?”

“Hey, we wouldn’t be safe,” protested another girl. “Remember what happened to Adeline.”

“But she was up by the Lakes,” pointed out a boy. “You know there are old broomstick routes from there to the lakes in Northern Scotland that some wizards still take. If there are still no deaths away from the Lakes, why should we think there will be?”

“It’s not too far from us,” said the first girl.

“All the more reason to learn to defend ourselves,” argued Sappho, just as they were interrupted by the arrival of three owls at the table. It was common for the owls to drop in at all three of the day’s meals, and Hannah was only relieved for the distraction-until a fourth arrived she recognized as Eldred, Ernie’s owl. The letter he carried was a thick one; Ernie might have spent a week writing it before getting it off.

The seventh year girl had also gotten a letter, and she noticed how anxiously she grabbed and it and tore it open. The girl sitting next to Francesca, who was in one of Hannah’s classes and she believed was called Eve, leaned and whispered something to her, which Fran herself muttered to Hannah and Alfred: “Berenice’s parents are constantly traveling overseas, especially in Europe. Though I’m not sure their employer didn’t pull everyone out of Britain and refuse to send anyone else in after You-Know-Who was discovered to be back.”

“Are you going to read that letter?” Sappho asked from over on her other side, because Hannah was putting it in her pocket.

“No,” said Hannah. “Not out here. When I get back to the dorms.”

The letter did burn in her pocket like a Howler, though, all through dinner. Berenice didn’t bother her any further, and nor did anyone else, at least while she ate. Sappho talked a lot about the upcoming Quodpot match with Susquehanna River School, which apparently had a really strong team, and Max complained way too much about the Transfiguration homework, which made Hannah worry again, since she still hadn’t gotten a chance to look at it, and now probably wouldn’t until Sunday; Ernie’s letter would probably take up her entire evening.

But as they were finishing up, Sappho suddenly nudged them, and said, “Look over at the staff table.”

They looked. At the head of that table, Mr. Bobwhite was seated, but looked like he might be about to get up, and Mrs. Hesselwin was so close there was no way she was seated, though their view of her was partially obscured by those teachers seated at the opposite side of the table. From the way they were talking, and the two teachers on each side were leaning in and one of them looked like he was trying to ask a question, something important had to be going on.

“Is anybody else dead?” wondered Max in a very tiny voice, and Fran promptly moved her hand over her chest and stomach in her religious manner.

“I don’t know,” said Sappho. “It looks more like they’re arguing; see how Mrs. Hesselwin’s hands are moving?” They did, now that she pointed that out, and also how she was shaking her head and partially scowling. “They might be arguing about announcing what’s going on to us or not; surely if it was just a death, they’d go ahead and tell us.”

“Do you have any idea of what else might be going on, Hannah?” asked Eve.

“How should I?” was Hannah’s simple reply.

But another student made a skeptical noise, and he wasn’t the only one, several of them looked angry at her. Hannah wondered if maybe she should yell at them that she didn’t know  _everything_ , but she was saved the need as Mr. Bobwhite rose and tapped his glass with his wand, generating a low chord that silenced the hall.

“As I believe just about everybody is here,” he said, “I have another announcement to make. First I would like to urge you not to take any extra undue anxiety from what I am about to say; these measures are to some extent precautionary.”

“Bullshit,” Hannah heard someone mutter, and then she was very anxious indeed.

“We are putting some new rules in place,” Mr. Bobwhite was continuing. “The curfew time is lowered to 9 PM, and furthermore, in between the hours of seven in the evening and nine in the morning, no one is to leave the building alone. At all times, students are not to travel more than one mile out. If for any reason anyone is required to go out of the valley, you must provide to the main office a signed letter from a parent or guardian. Also, we are imposing new rules about spells to be performed outside the classrooms; certain spells will require permissions.”

“I wouldn’t worry about getting that; you will,” Alfred whispered to Hannah, who had already figured as much.

“I repeat that these are mainly precautionary measures,” Mr. Bobwhite was wrapping up. “There is no cause for any immediate alarm.”

“I bet he’s picking his words carefully there,” Sappho murmured to the others. “How do you think he’s defining immediate?”

“Obviously Death Eaters aren’t going to swoop down and attack the school tomorrow,” Max murmured back. “But I think you’re right. Something’s happened, something that’s making them think we’re in more danger than they previously thought.”

A terrible thought occurred to Hannah: what if someone was after  _her_? What is she really was putting the school in more danger by being there? But surely, she told herself, if she was in any particular danger, someone would tell her.

 


End file.
